When we think about the local king cake scene, names like Haydel’s, Hi-Do, Antoine’s, Dong Phuong and the seemingly endless Randazzo’s factions come to mind. But arguably none of them have gathered quite as much notoriety as Larry Ragusa’s King Cakes just past Arabi.
Over the years, Ragusa gained attention for his muffuletta king cake, a king cake stuffed with olive salad and a thin layer of salami — or as his regulars call it, “the plain.”
As Ragusa said in his commercials, “We know what the people of New Orleans want in a king cake: garish, lurid, exaggerated and over-the-top flavors and fillings that would be out of place at a 99-cent all-you-can-eat buffet and serve the purpose of ruining what used to be a fairly simple holiday treat.”
It all started in the early 2000s, when New Orleans actor Lawrence Beron came up with the character of Larry Ragusa. At the time, he was doing comedy shows in the showroom on the side of Martine’s on Metairie Road. Beron was noticing that local businesses were getting more and more “garish” with their king cakes, and he didn’t see an end in sight.
“It's always bemused me as a local that you can't just have a king cake anymore,” Beron says. “It's got to have some kind of addition or additions, plural. It came to be what I loosely considered the King Cake Arms Race. There has to be filling and there has to be icing, and it has to be 'why can't we have two fillings then?'”
Certainly, the culture of excess in the city never stopped at king cakes.
“Being a New Orleanian, you go out to dinner and you say, 'I want to have the fried trout,'” Beron says. “‘OK, how about if we put some sauteed crab meat on top of that?' 'OK, sure.' 'OK, and what about some toasted almonds and make it an almondine?' 'OK, fine.' 'And what about some spinach souffle?' 'No, no, no, wait a minute, hold on.'”
Meanwhile, the Randazzo king cake wars were raging on unabated. Various factions of the storied culinary family had for decades fought for the right to claim the mantle as THE Randazzo king cake, and New Orleans, being New Orleans, had become bitterly and hilariously divided.
Combine the king cake concoctions with the inner family dramas, and Beron knew it was a parody goldmine. And the landscape has only gotten worse in the last decade — Rouses is now actually selling muffuletta king cakes. Seriously.
Enter Larry Ragusa, a local baker with a penchant for chain-smoking and wisecracking, who would show a small crowd at Martine’s his king cakes. At first glance, it appeared to be a run-of-the-mill king cake sitting out on the table, setting the stage for the perfect big reveal.
“The top was separate, and I'd pick up the top and reveal the olive salad and salami,” Beron says, “and there literally would be an audible gasp from the audience.”
Beron felt he was onto something. He continued doing the bit locally, but in 2011, he and director David White decided to take Ragusa to the world wide web. The two were talking one day, when White asked Beron if he’d written anything that might be a good fit for a YouTube video.
“I swear I was so green and this was so long ago, I asked him, 'What's YouTube?'” Beron says.
But while Beron may not have been familiar with YouTube back in the platform’s early years, he instantly knew it was Ragusa’s time to shine online.
“Even right there I said, 'Yeah, I have written something I think we can do that'd be great with the added assistance of video,’” he says.
Beron and White both envisioned the vibes of late night New Orleans commercials that would air during shows like “Morgus the Magnificent.” The ads were low budget, often homemade and full of mistakes.
With a cast and crew, they wound up making 11 commercials for Larry Ragusa King Cakes, formerly known as Ragusa Brothers King Cakes. In them, Ragusa shows off his creations, whether it’s adding shrimp bordelaise to his muffuletta king cake or the Mrs. Ragusa special, which is blueberry filling on top of the regular olive salad and salami. Oh, and don’t forget the chopped-up weenies and tomato gravy.
But family drama is at the heart of the ads. The fourth ad culminates in a nasty fight between Larry Ragusa and his brother Vincent, who appears off-screen. In later commercials, there are tense scenes between Larry and Vincent’s wife Marie (Joanna Rivers), who prefers traditional king cakes.
“You might enjoy watching them but you don't have as much fun as I do making them,” Beron says. “Because literally we took the standpoint: Nothing could be wrong. If there's a huge error in the middle, so much the better.”
Ragusa has strayed away from the limelight since his appearance on “Kitchen King” in 2015. Obviously, he’s still making king cakes at the shop, and though they took a hit during Covid, he assures us they’re “definitely throttling back” with a strong season this year.
As for his lyin’, thievin’ brother Vincent and Vincent’s wife, Marie, time hasn’t healed all wounds. Ragusa says he can’t remember the last time he talked to either of them.
Although Ragusa occasionally tries new flavors at the shop, he says about three quarters of what they sell these days is the “plain.”
“There was an oil spill special we had that I can assure you had nothing to do with BP. So don't get that idea,” Ragusa says. “But most people like the plain.”
And for those dying to know, yes, he’s aware of Rouses selling muffuletta king cakes now, but he tells Gambit he sees it as “a testament to my greatness” more than competition.
“I don't need to compete with nobody,” he says. “I got my customers. They know where to find me.”
White is taking the news of Rouses’ cake slightly differently. “It's outright theft,” he says. “If we would have known, we should have done a trademark on that.”
“The nerve,” Beron agrees. “And they are not the first one. They're just the most blatant one.”
But in a way, the fact that it’s Rouses is kismet. Not to give away Ragusa’s trade secrets but he may source the ingredients for “the plain” entirely from Rouses — “one-stop shopping” as Beron calls it.
“It's crazy but if people want to eat muffuletta king cakes, that's their own cross to bear,” White says.
They shouldn’t be too surprised though. Back in Ragusa’s heyday, he made a guest appearance at a king cake tasting contest. Many local bakeries sent in a few king cakes, but Ragusa — being the man of the people that he is — repped his king cake in person.
Even though they had a monitor playing the commercials in the background and the muffuletta king cake sitting out in all of its horror, some of the foodies didn’t seem to be in on the joke.
"The plain."
“People were laughing at it, and then people started eating it, and we were like, 'What? What is happening?'” White says. “People were enjoying it, like, 'Oh, this is very good.' ... Some of them seemed like they thought it was all legit.”
Some people even came up for seconds, they say, talking up the combination of sweet and savory flavors. By the end of the night, both of their king cakes were gone.
“We were laughing up our sleeves about it,” Beron says. “Of course, Larry didn't have any sleeves on his shirt.”
Though it’s been a while since Ragusa’s last public appearance, we may not have seen the last of him.
“We always talk about making more (videos),” Beron says. “I do have a concept for making more but it's more difficult than you think to get everybody together, and you have sophomore slump fears and things like that.”
For now, Ragusa still remains part of Beron and White’s lives and retains a bit of a cult following locally. Dirty Coast put out a Larry Ragusa T-shirt earlier this year, and Beron will occasionally get recognized on the street by someone who goes, “I need two of your plains.”
White, who is newly married, says he recently showed his wife the commercials for the first time. Even though she’s from another country and isn’t familiar with Mardi Gras, he says “she was rolling” with laughter.
“I'm sorry that you didn't show her them in order to entice her to marry you,” Beron says.
Indeed, the Ragusa commercials appear to have transcended local inside joke status to have universal appeal.
“I was talking to a friend of mine who's from Denmark. He said, ‘I turned people onto it in Denmark — even they get it,’” Beron says. “He said, 'There's jackasses in Denmark, too.'”
To place an order, call Larry Ragusa King Cakes at (504) 888-1234.
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